Health policies in the news: communication strategies of the last three ministers in Portugal

Abstract

After being involved in many polemic events for several months, Portuguese Health Minister Correia de Campos left office on January 29th 2008, and was replaced by the paediatrician Ana Jorge. It lagged behind an intense newsabilityabout health pOlicies initiated by that Minister, prolix in declarations to the media. His successor embraced a more sober style. Health policies didn'tchange much, but the news items wrote about them were drastically different In June 21 st 2011, the government team changed and a new Health Minister was sworn - Paulo Macedo - who, like his predecessor, became known for releasing moderate statements to the media, although several profound reforms in the health sector were to be expected. In this paper we want to analyse how those Mini5ters managed their relation with the media during their governments, and to understand their communication strategies and the journalists' reaction to them. We gathered every news article that mentioned health policies and was published between2008 and 2011 in three generic newspapers: a daily quality newspaper (Publico), a daily popular newspaper (Jornal de Noticias) ,and a weekly quality newspaper (Expresso). 1987 news articles were analised. This paper is part of wider investigation, "Disease in the News". This project's purpose is to understand the health sector's mediatisation in the Portuguese media through an analysis in four axis: the themes and sources of the health news articles; the information sources linked to health services; the organization of those sources; how health journalists understand the health area; how the health sources evaluate the journalists' work. We will share some of the results from the first part.